The Queen of Sleepy Eye (12 page)

He laughed. “I'm helping her out today. A better question might be, is Butter expecting
you
?”

Butter said from behind the curtain, “He's okay, Amy.”

The man worked the pump until a surge of water gushed into the bowl. He bent over to splash water on his face. The hard muscles of his back and shoulders reminded me of the farm boys back in Gilbertsville. Of course, the boys back home wore buzz cuts all summer, and I'd never seen any of them lather their faces, chests, and arms. I clamped my mouth closed when a fly buzzed too close. The twins appeared in the doorway. “Falcon's got a girlfriend,” said one, and the brother joined in the sing-song taunt.

Falcon? Is this a zoo or a farm?

He spun from the basin, arms stretched high, his fingers arched into claws, his face masked by suds. He chased the boys with a throaty growl out into the yard. “And don't come back until the wood has been stacked, or I'll eat you for lunch, I will.”

Butter padded into the room with Lamb on her hip and buried a kiss deep into his chubby cheek as she sat him on the floor. She tipped a basket of wooden blocks before him. “Make something pretty for me.”

Falcon told Butter, “The twins will sleep well tonight. There's more than a cord of wood down there.”

Butter thanked me for setting the table and invited me for lunch. I declined, saying I was expected at the funeral home. Honestly, my instinct was to run, and I would have done just that if Butter hadn't intervened. “You can't leave without seeing Feather. She'd never forgive me.” Flour billowed when Butter spilled a heap of soft dough out of a ceramic bowl. “Falcon, you know how Feather gets. She's likely to be with her hens all day. Would you take Amy down to the henhouse?”

With a clean shirt and face, Falcon could have been a young Eric the Conqueror, he was that Nordic. North Sea eyes. Straight nose. Lots of white teeth. His arms swung loosely with his long stride. Not one hint of self-consciousness sullied the grace of his gait. I smoothed the front of the Mexican blouse Lauren had sent me, only to trip over an exposed root and stumble. Falcon caught me with a hand under my elbow. We walked past the barn and a vast vegetable garden. Falcon turned me away from the garden. “Let's go this way. It's easier.” We swung wide of the barn and walked down a hill of tall grass dotted with purple flowers. To settle my pulse, I asked, “So how did you end up with a name like Falcon?”

“How did you end up with a name like Amy?”

“It's short for Amelia. And Falcon?”

“The twins came up with the name.”

“So you're a predator?”

“It depends on whom you ask,” he said and winked.

The wink was nice, playful, but he had used whom correctly. Doing so raised the tempo of my pulse and made my armpits sticky. An alarm went off in my head. This guy was a hippie. Who knew what kind of craziness he'd dabbled in.

“Listen, I hate to bother you,” I said. “Just point the way to the henhouse. I'm sure I can find it. All that clucking, you know.”

“It's no bother,” he said and smiled.

I nearly whimpered. We walked toward a stand of trees. “Back home,” I said, talking around my pounding heart, “the henhouses are closer to the barn.”

“Straw got tired of the roosters waking the twins up at four in the morning.”

Our eyes met. Falcon was smiling. His eyes squeezed down on an idea.

“What?” I asked, looking at my feet.

“You are a timeless beauty, Miss Amelia.”

I covered my nose with my hands. Falcon stopped and pulled them away. “The people on Madison Avenue try to lay a trip on anyone who doesn't fit their definition of beauty. You have nothing to be ashamed of, Amelia. Your nose is perfect. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Your long neck. Those bedroom—How old are you, anyway?”

The place where he held my arm tingled. To make seventeen seem more mature, I told him I was going to be a freshman at Westmont College that fall. He wasn't impressed. In fact, his voice got hard.

“That's a Christian college, right?”

“You know it?”

“My dad offered to pay my tuition to any Christian college in America, so I could follow in the family business of saving souls.” He lengthened his stride. I trotted every few steps to keep up with him. “So we have a nice Christian girl among us, do we? A virgin, no doubt. You
are
a virgin, aren't you?”

“I don't see how that's any of your business.”

“So you
are
a virgin.” He stopped. “Why? Why would a loving God who made you a sexual being deny you a source of great pleasure?
Does that make sense to you? If you're headed for college, if you want to be a scholar, Amelia, you can't be afraid to ask the hard questions.” He continued toward the henhouse.

“You don't even know me,” I said. “I
have
asked the hard questions, and it comes down to this: I trust God to know what's best for me, and I don't want to settle for anything else.”

“My, my, that gives you a lofty seat from whence to judge. Have you come as a missionary to us poor, misguided hippies? Have you come to save us? Or maybe you're like the twelve spies sent into the Promised Land. What will you report back to the church ladies? Is the gossip true? I'd be careful, if I were you. You could lose your soul standing this close to a real hippie.”

Part of what he said was true. I'd come with more than a bit of curiosity. After all, I wore the Mexican blouse and carried Lauren's notebook in my pocket. “I came to return Feather's basket. I met her mother and four brothers. It's been a pleasant afternoon, thank you. Now, which way to the henhouse?”

Falcon pointed down a trail through the trees. “Watch out for the rooster. His name is Spartacus, and he lives up to his gladiator name.”

* * *

INSIDE THE CHICKEN yard, a large turkey greeted me with a puffy display of rust-and-white tail feathers. As handsome as his feathers were, his lumpy red-and-blue wattle gave him a face a mother would find difficult to love. I'd seen plenty of the white turkeys raised for the Thanksgiving table, but they lived in large buildings with attached yards. This turkey drew ever nearer until I chanced a touch of his feathery ruff. He nudged closer. I backed off. “You're not a rooster in disguise are you?” He shimmied his feathers to laugh off the idea. “Good, because I hear the rooster isn't so nice.”

A clutch of hens as varied as stones in a stream, scurried around the corner of the henhouse. White. Black with white speckles. Tweedy hens of rust and black. The rooster strutted behind them, cocking his head in my direction.

“Feather?” I called.

The rooster scratched in the dirt and puffed his feathers.

Uh-oh.
“Feather?”

Feather stepped out of the henhouse stroking a ginger-colored hen she held under her arm. Bits of straw stubble and feathers clung to her hair. “Don't worry. Pick will take care of Spartacus.”

“Pick?”

“The turkey.”

Spartacus stretched his neck to crow at the sky and sound the charge. Pick stepped in front of me, lowered his head, and countered the rooster's attack. It was clear these two had sparred before. Spartacus relinquished the fight to hightail it toward the outer reaches of the yard. Pick followed, all but scooping Spartacus along with his wings. When Spartacus made a move to dart away, Pick anticipated his move to block his escape, effectively holding the rooster in place.

“Pick loves girls. He'd protect you to the death. But let one of my rotten brothers come in here, Pick leaves them to Spartacus. All those scabs on Frog's legs? That was Spartacus.”

Feather invited me into the henhouse. Rows of laying boxes filled with fresh hay lined one wall, and a roost like bleachers at a football stadium occupied another.

“Do you have to train the chickens to lay their eggs in the boxes?” I asked.

Feather laughed. “Nobody tells a chicken what to do. If they want to lay their eggs in the boxes, that's what they'll do. Usually, I have
to hunt around the yard for their eggs. It helps that the hens are so prideful. They cluck and strut each time they lay an egg. The other hens join in. Everybody's happy when a new egg arrives.”

Feather transferred the eggs from Butter's basket to hers. “You saved me a quarter for today's rent.” She hung the basket over a nail and paused. She turned her inquisitive eyes on me. “Could we make a trade? When I delivered the eggs the other day, I noticed you sure have a lot of books. Are you any good at it, reading I mean?”

Reading was like breathing for me. “I'm okay.”

“Do you think you could teach me?”

“Feather—”

“Don't say no yet. Think about it. I'll come to you so you won't have to walk to the farm.”

I thought about Mrs. Clancy's reaction to Feather's last visit. “That wouldn't work. Besides, I enjoyed the walk.”

“So you'll do it?” She nestled her cheek into the hen's feathery back. “It's just that some kids make fun of me. Not being able to read …” Feather's head came up. Her face contorted into a grimace, and her eyes drained of light.

“Feather?” And again I said,
“Feather?”

Her eyes focused on me. “So you'll do it?”

I agreed to read with her two days a week until I left for California. She threw her arms around my waist and held me tight. I returned her hug. Her boney shoulders shook under my arms.

“Feather?”

“I'm going to love you forever.”

* * *

“YOU BOUGHT A dress? Why would you do such a thing? The transmission could come from Denver any day.”

“You can be such a
sapa
.”

“Calling me a toad isn't going to put the money back in your purse. You have to take the dress back. You kept the tags, right?”

Mom lifted the skirt of the dress, admiring its fullness and the snug fit of the bodice. “It's too bad they don't wear petticoats anymore.”

“You're not listening to me.”

“That's because I didn't buy the dress.”

Uh-oh.
“Mom, you promised, you pinkie promised you wouldn't get mixed up with a man until we got to California.”

“You said our pinkie pledges were null and void.” She twirled in front of the mirror. “Besides, I'm not mixed up with anybody. Bruce is good to me. He knows how to treat me nice. He makes tons of money.”

This was how her relationships started. The guy bought her a gift, and if the gift was nice, meaning something she could never afford to buy for herself, he was a winner. Without exception, the guy turned out to be a Trojan horse of trouble. Who knew what would spew out of Bruce?

“Bruce and me were walking down Main Street—”

“So everyone in Cordial knows about this guy but me?”

“He isn't like any other man I've known.”

“They never are.” I flopped on the bed.

“He talks about taking me places, exotic places, places I've never heard of. He's been to Hawaii and Mexico and that little island off the coast of California, the one they sing the song about.”

“Catalina?”

“Doesn't that sound romantic?” She purred the island's name. “Catalina.”

We'd been in Cordial less than four weeks, a new record for
Mom. The rest of her speech could have been cut and pasted from a dozen previous scripts. No one had met as many Prince Charmings as Mom, until, without fail, they'd all turned into wart-faced Rumpelstiltskins.

The doorbell rang.

“That's him.” Mom smoothed the broad white collar of the dress. She bent forward and shimmied. When she rose, the swell of her breasts filled the neckline. “Fofa, go answer the door.” She spritzed her neck, wrists, and the back of her knees with Tabu and shooed me toward the door. “And be nice.”

I paused before closing the bedroom door. I glanced toward the tiara's velvet box on the dresser. “You're not thinking of wearing the tiara tonight, are you?”

“Bruce hasn't seen it yet.”

“Then take a scepter, too, in case he gets fresh,” I said and slammed the door closed.

Something menacing but not lethal hit the door behind me, probably a shoe.

Bruce stood beyond the glass of the kitchen door. I would have known him anywhere. Mom attracted his type like flies to buttermilk. With his chiseled-chin good looks and deep dimples, he couldn't see past his ego to picture his future as minced meat. Contrary to my instincts, I let him in. My eyes burned from his aftershave. Brut, what else?

With my back to the sink, I leaned against the cabinet and recited my script with words as flat as Kansas. “She wants to look nice for you, so she needs a couple more minutes. Would you like a drink of water?”

He shook his head, smiled uneasily. “This here's a real home, just like Francie said.” He scratched the back of his head, popped all of his
knuckles, and widened his stance, hands on hips, only to stand gape-jawed for lack of anything to say.

I took pity on him. “Run while you can.”

He crossed his considerable triceps over his chest. “Say what?”

“The dress is only the beginning. I've seen it a million times. She'll take you for all your worth.”

“The dress was my idea.'”

“Was it you or her who stopped to look in the window?”

Bruce studied the ceiling, rubbing his chin. He wasn't making this easy.

I said, “Look, as soon as a new transmission comes from Denver, we're out of here. It could be here tomorrow. I just don't want to see you hurt, that's all.”

Mom turned off the radio in the bedroom, my signal to excuse myself and call her out. Before I left Bruce, I gave him one more thing to think about. “Keep an eye on your wallet.”

His hand went straight to his back pocket.

The shed creaked as H did his chin-ups on the bar across the door. “Must do hundred,” he said and lowered himself, only to heft himself into another chin-up. “Forty-one,” he said through his teeth. “Count for me.”

“I came to visit Mrs. Masterson.”

“Forty-two. Helps me … forty-three … save energy. Forty-five.”

“You skipped forty-four.”

He groaned but pulled his chin to the bar again.

“Forty-five. Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Football,” he said through a grunt.

“Forty-six.” Light shone through the slats of the shed. An odd array of equipment filled the small space. There were dumbbells made of broom handles and coffee cans filled with concrete, a row of tires, and a burlap sack hanging from the rafters filled with who-knew-what. “Forty-seven.”

H's arms quivered with the effort of pulling his bulk toward the bar.

“Forty … eight.”

H fell to the ground outside the shed's door and splayed on his back across the path. His spongy middle lay flat under his T-shirt. “Oh man, I did fifty yesterday.”

I sat on a stack of tires by the door. “How long have you been doing this?”

“I emptied the shed for the Mastersons early this spring. We trade. I mow the lawn; she lets me use the shed.”

“Do you talk to her?”

“She never comes out, if that's what you mean.”

“You could knock on the door.”

H seemed to consider that for a while. “I figured she wanted to be alone.”

I'd figured the same thing too until Pastor Ted's sermon the day before. I'd never been fond of the book of James. Considering trials pure joy. Celebrating humble circumstances. Persevering through trials. James's writing reminded me too much of my P.E. teacher, Miss Gustafson. “Girls, your body is a machine. Put bad food in, you can expect poor performance. I can tell by the way you run that most of you didn't have a well-balanced breakfast this morning.” During this part of her speech, she had frowned at Lauren and me until her caterpillar eyebrows touched in the middle. “I mean protein, carbohydrates, dairy, and fresh fruit. It's for you to decide right now.
Will my
machine be finely tuned and strong, or will I wear queen-sized panty hose
the rest of my life?
Now get up and run your hearts out.”

When Pastor Ted read from James, Mrs. Masterson's face came to mind. Seeing as she was the most recent widow of Spruce Street
church, I figured everyone from church had already beaten me to the front door.

H stood and brushed the dirt from his clothes. “Hand me that Thermos.” He shook the plaid container vigorously and chugged the contents. He swiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swallowed hard. Tears welled in his eyes.

“Do I want to know what you just drank?”

He swallowed again. “Raw eggs and Tabasco. Protein.”

I shivered. “Gross.”

He struck a John Wayne pose, hands on hips, head cocked. “Yup, gross all right.”

I ignored his swagger. “What did you think of Pastor Ted's sermon yesterday, what he said about widows and all?” Part of me wanted to make him feel bad for being so self-absorbed he'd forgotten to visit Mrs. Masterson. The other part hoped H had already discovered a biblical loophole he'd be willing to share.

“I don't know.”

“Don't you think we should visit Mrs. Masterson in her time of distress?”

He tossed a football up and down, up and down. “I … uh … I …” Was this the same guy who had opened his arms to Mrs. Masterson and wrapped Dr. Masterson in a shroud?

“Never mind. You stay out here and toss your football. I'll check on her.” I skidded to a stop on the gravel driveway. All I had to offer her were some Junior Mints that had been in my purse since the night before, a gift from Mom's lover boy, Bruce. “Help me pick some of these flowers.”

H smiled and obeyed. By the time I stood at Mrs. Masterson's door, H was setting up an obstacle course of tires. The bouquet
of dandelions wilted in my hand.
Pathetic.
The doorknob clicked. I tossed the bouquet over the porch railing.

“Hello, Mrs. Masterson, I thought I'd stop by to say hello, but if you're too busy …”

“Amy, isn't it? Come in, come in.”

* * *

I HELD MY breath as Mrs. Masterson set the tray on the parlor table with trembling hands, laden as it was with a teapot, cups, and saucers. A smear of lipstick colored her front teeth. “Oh dear, I didn't bring the sugar bowl. Do you take sugar, my dear?”

This was my first hot tea. “No, I like it brown.”

A breeze tickled the leaves of the trees outside and creaked the rafters, but the windows of the parlor remained closed. My forehead dampened and my blouse stuck to my chest. Mrs. Masterson wore a sweater draped over her shoulders. Hot tea sounded awful. The cup jostled on its saucer as Mrs. Masterson poured the tea. I crossed my legs at my ankles and tucked them under the chair just as my home economics teacher had taught us. I regretted wearing my flip-flops and shorts.

All the typical accoutrements occupied the parlor. Doilies. Marble-topped tables with knobby legs. Deceptively uncomfortable velvet chairs. What I hadn't expected were cobwebs in every corner and the dust that dulled the sheen of the furniture. On the mantel, candles slumped like sleeping sentries on either side of a crystal bowl dulled by dust. This was a new awareness—this dust-free expectation—that working for Mrs. Clancy had created. When I got to know Mrs. Masterson better, I would offer to bring a duster and some of Mrs. Clancy's furniture polish.

“Next time you come,” she said, “I'll have cookies.”

“I should have called first.”

“Don't be silly. Your kindness to Arthur and me makes you a welcomed guest at any time.” She sipped her tea and I copied her. Every book I'd ever read about the English made tea the cure-all to every human dilemma. Rain soaked?
Drink a cup of tea.
The house burned to the ground?
Won't you have some tea?
Your cat died?
Oh, let me put
the kettle on.
What the English drank could not have resembled what Mrs. Masterson served that day. The bitter brew stripped the enamel clean off my teeth.

“Is the tea too strong? That's how Arthur liked it. I guess I've gotten used to it.”

I appreciated how Mrs. Masterson spoke her deceased husband's name without sniffing and grabbing for a tissue. I touched the tea to my upper lip without sipping.

“You're very young, but you'll discover soon enough how a woman gets used to so many things when she has lived with a man as long as I lived with Arthur. Men have their ways, but women do too.” She shifted as if to rise. “Let me get the sugar.” Mrs. Masterson teetered.

“Oh no, please don't. The tea is perfect.” I figured ten tablespoons of tea remained in the cup. I remembered H chugging the raw eggs. “What's the sense in drinking tea if it isn't robust?”

Mrs. Masterson laughed. “You sound just like my Arthur.” She lowered her eyes. “It's a terrible thing to confess … I loved Arthur as much as a woman can love a man. I believe he was God's sweetest gift to me in this lifetime.” She raised her eyes to meet my gaze. “But it's a relief, really, that he's gone. I can sleep through the night and not wake with a start, wondering if he is still here or not.” She set her cup in its saucer. “During the night, I would touch his chest. When it rattled under my hand, I knew he was alive, and I would dose off again.”

I gulped a mouthful of tea.

“And then that night, the night Arthur finally left me, I was so tired. I'd climbed up and down the stairs for anything he needed. He wouldn't eat, so I prepared all of his favorite things. He showed no interest at all. Finally, I dipped my finger in honey and spread it over his lower lip. That he sucked off, so I felt a bit better. Before I turned the light off, I told him if he needed anything, anything at all, I would get it for him. He said, ‘Just hold my hand.' I slept through the whole night, didn't wake once. In the morning, he was gone. I should have sat up, I suppose, and kept the light on to stay awake.”

She spoke the words as a statement, but she meant them as a question. “I hope I have someone like you to take care of me when I'm sick,” I said.

Mrs. Masterson sighed and gazed out the window. What she saw made her smile, so I turned to see H catch his foot on the rim of a tire and hit the ground hard. He looked over his shoulder. I turned back to Mrs. Masterson. Her hand covered her smile. “I don't think he can see us.” She winced, “Oh no, there he goes again.”

Like a goose flapping its wings to take off, H hopped with waving arms through the tires.

“Males are a determined lot, aren't they?” asked Mrs. Masterson, blotting her mouth with her napkin. “But then they have to be, what with taking chances to make things better for their families. Whatever poor H is working toward, no doubt he will achieve it. My Arthur was like that. If anyone, and it was usually me, told him a dream was impossible, he kept at it until he proved me wrong.”

With Mrs. Masterson occupied watching H out the window, I tilted my head back to empty the cup of tea, something Lizzy Bennet never would have done. That was when I noticed the yellow stains on my hands from picking the dandelions. “Do you like to read, Mrs. Masterson?”

Her eyes lit from within. “Follow me.” We paused at double oak doors. “Arthur saw his patients in this room until he retired. That was more than twenty years ago. He treated every last one of Cordial's residents, but he held a special place in his heart for the coal miners and their families. The men came to him broken from accidents or with their lungs clogged with coal dust. Arthur worked and worked to improve ventilation in the mines. Testified before Congress, he did. It's quite ironic that he died of lung cancer. He'd never smoked a day in his life.” She pushed open the doors. “Now this is my reading room. I didn't spend much time in here during Arthur's illness. Before that I read at the end of every day. Now I read in the morning when the light is strong and my eyes are at their freshest.”

Books crammed the shelves of one entire wall, and books that couldn't fit in vertically were piled atop the rows. Beside an overstuffed chair, stacks of books completely covered a tabletop near the window. My heart beat excitedly. I recognized many of the titles from literature courses. Others were intriguing strangers.

I took
Sense and Sensibility
out of my bag and held it out to Mrs. Masterson. “Would you like to read this? I love Jane Austen's books. Even though I know she's making fun of the gentry, I crave the kind of civility she lived.”

She took the book. “Even when her characters are being complete scoundrels, they use such pretty words.” We shared a laugh. She flipped through the pages of the book. “You've read this many times.”

I admitted to buying the book used but also that I'd read it at least a dozen times.

“How sweet of you to lend such a dear book. I promise to take good care of it. My copy disappeared years ago. I may have loaned it to a friend or one of Arthur's patients. But now I must share one of my favorites with you.” She ran a finger along the spines of the
books. The skin of her hands was transparent like waxed paper, and a dark bruise as big as a plum marked her wrist. “Something more recent. A story you will carry with you always.

“This was my mother's copy of
Sister Carrie
,” she said, tilting the book and biting her lip in concentration. “My father made her throw the book away. I dug through the trash heap until I found it. A significant book to be sure, but not what I'd recommend for summer reading.” She slid
Sister Carrie
back into place and continued to finger the spines of the books. “Yes, this is it,
My Àntonia
by Willa Cather. Have you read it?”

Had I?
“I don't think so.”

“Perfect. I was born in Nebraska, and I can tell you Willa Cather gets it right. You'll be transported back to a simpler time where women had to be as strong as men … and they still do,” she said and winked.

“I'll start the book tonight.” I checked my watch. “I need to leave soon, but I have time to help you with the dishes, Mrs. Masterson.”

“Now that we're exchanging favorite books, you must call me Leoti, and then I'll let you help me.”

Stacks of pastel casseroles covered the kitchen table and vases of perishing flowers filled the countertop. “Oh my, I should have brought you something for dinner,” I said.

“You should have done no such thing. My friends have been wonderful, even the ones I've tangled with on the elder board. I'll never eat all the food they've brought, and some of it I wouldn't want to.” She smiled and filled the sink with water. I started to relax. She was stronger than she looked. “The book and visit are the best gifts you could have brought. Folks are comfortable dropping by a meal, and I must admit, I'd done the same when others have lost dear ones, but it's difficult for friends to sit and chat. Everything we think to say
seems terribly trite. And I know they loved Arthur too. I suppose in time …”

Leoti's hands stilled in the water. “Only you and Pastor Ted have truly come to visit. H hasn't been in the house. Poor boy, I see him staring at the house, his eyes watery with tears, and I start to go out to him, but then I think of my boys. They hated being caught expressing any kind of emotion. Do you suppose men believe they'll melt if they shed a tear or two?” Caught in a memory, she shook her head.

“Leoti?”

She leaned heavily against the sink.

“Please rest while I finish washing the dishes.” I said. “It's the least I can do.”